Thursday, September 25, 2014

One in Ten People Living in the United States Can't Speak Fluent English

More than 19 million people living within the United
States are not fluent in the English language, according to a recent
report by the Brookings Institution.
That translates to one out of every ten people. While stores such as
Wal-Mart and even campaign ads such as those coming from Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), cater to Spanish speakers, the study suggest feeding this improficiency could hurt economic growth.

English proficiency is a strong predictor of economic standing among
immigrants regardless of educational attainment. Numerous studies have
shown that immigrants who are proficient in English earn more than those
who lack proficiency, with higher skilled immigrants reaping the
greatest advantage.

Conversely, high-skilled immigrants who are
not proficient in English are twice as likely to work in “unskilled”
jobs (i.e. those requiring low levels of education or training) as those
who are proficient in English. This underemployment represents a loss
of productivity that yields lower wages for individuals and families and
lower tax revenues and consumer spending for local areas. LEP
immigrants also have higher rates of unemployment and poverty than their
English proficient counterparts.

Moreover, higher proficiency in
English among immigrants is associated with the greater academic and
economic success of their children. English skills also contribute to
immigrants’ civic involvement and social connection to their new home.

Individuals without English proficiency earn an average of 25 to 40
percent less than their more acclimated counterparts, according to the
report.

Jill H. Wilson, Brookings senior research analyst and associate fellow, even went so far as to assert that:

“English proficiency is the most essential means of opening doors to
economic opportunity for immigrant workers in the United States.”

If these claims are true, pandering to the language deficiency is not
only harming the economic growth of the United States, it is abating
the so-called ‘opportunity gap’ between immigrants and natives of this
country.

As
it should, given Pryor's 97 percent support of President Obama.
Congressman Cotton is fond of listing the places throughout Arkansas
where he has campaigned, looking for an Arkansan who agrees with the
president 97 percent of the time and has been unable to find him
--outside of D.C. and Senator Pryor's office.

The
most recent debate between Gardner and his lockstep-with-Obama opponent
Mark Udall turned on national security, and suddenly all across the
country Democrats like Udall are having to defend their long time, rote
defense of an administration that has defined forever fecklessness on
national security and which has sliced Pentagon budgets and the nation's
military far beyond the bone. As Congressman Rob Wittman --Chairman of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus-- told me Monday,
their is a growing recognition that there needs to be a huge "plus-up"
in defense spending immediately, but only a GOP majority in the Senate
will guarantee that this most anti-defense of president and reckless of
senators Harry Reid will be obliged to get out of the way of the
nation's national security needs.

The backdrop of failures in Obamacare and tremors in the economy -especially housing-- add to Democratic woes, but the generic ballot polling
represents one thing more than anything else: The president and his
Democratic allies have not been taking care of the common defense. And
voters know.

They are going to vote for seriousness on
ISIS, Russia the PRC and all things national security related. That is
great news for Republicans who have regained their long-standing and
deserved edge among voters for responsibility on such matters.From AP's Donna Cassata:

Just
41 percent approve of Obama's handling of terrorism while 50 percent
disapprove, according to last week's New York Times/CBS poll , which
gave the president worse marks than Republican President George W. Bush
in 2006. At the same time, Republicans had a hefty double-digit
advantage of 52-31 percent on the question of which party is more
trusted in dealing with terrorism and a 49-37 percent edge on foreign
policy.
President Obama and his congressional allies are
about to reap the political whirlwind they have sowed. Pray the country
doesn't have to reap at home the consequences of negligence abroad for
the past six years.

(Reuters) – U.S. and coalition planes pounded Islamic
State positions in Syria again on Wednesday, but the strikes did not
halt the fighters’ advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told
of villages burnt and captives beheaded….

The U.S. military confirmed it had struck inside Syria northwest of
al Qaim, the Iraqi town at the Albu Kamal border crossing. It also
struck inside Iraq west of Baghdad and near the Iraqi Kurdish capital
Arbil on Wednesday.

An Islamist fighter in the Albu Kamal area reached by phone said there had been at least nine strikes on Wednesday by “crusader forces.” Targets included an industrial area….

Even as Islamic State outposts elsewhere have been struck, the
fighters have accelerated their campaign to capture Kobani, a Kurdish
city on the border with Turkey. Nearly 140,000 Syrian Kurds have fled
into Turkey since last week, the fastest exodus of the entire three-year
civil war.

An Islamic State source, speaking to Reuters via online messaging,
said the group had taken several villages to the west of Kobani. Footage
posted on YouTube appeared to show Islamic State fighters using weapons
including artillery as they battled Kurdish forces near Kobani. The
Islamists were shown raising the group’s black flag after tearing down a
Kurdish one….

A Syrian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman says attacks on the Islamic State by the United States and its allies are not the answer.

“Our battle with ISIS is an intellectual battle,” Omar Mushaweh
said in a statement published Sept. 9 on the Syrian Brotherhood’s
official website, “and we wish that some of its members get back to
their sanity, we really distinguish between those in ISIS who are lured
and brainwashed and they might go back to the path of righteous, and
between those who has foreign agendas and try to pervert the way of the
[Syrian] revolution.”

Rather, the first target for any Western intervention should be
dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Mushaweh asserts, according to a
translation of his comments by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Such comments should reinforce Western concerns about the Syrian Brotherhood, whose members are prominent among the Free Syrian Army (FSA),
one of the supposedly moderate factions in the Syrian civil war which
receive U.S. training and weapons. And it shows the challenge of finding
truly moderate allies on the ground in Syria. Compared to ISIS, the FSA
might be considered moderate. Then again, ISIS was so ruthlessly
violent that al-Qaida disavowed the group in February.

In addition, the Syrian Brotherhood openly mourned the death last
week of a commander in Ahrar Al Asham, a Syrian faction with ties to
al-Qaida.

The duel between al-Qaradawi and al-Baghdadi has primarily been about
turf, means, timing, and size of a caliphate. Al-Qaradawi has a much larger vision – an Ottoman caliphate.

Speaking of al-Qaradawi, he doesn’t support U.S. military action against ISIS, which indicates that he too is more concerned with removing Assad:

Yusuf Al Qaradawi, an influential Brotherhood cleric
living in Qatar, joined in criticizing the American military campaign
against ISIS. “I totally disagree with [ISIS] ideology and means,” he
wrote on Twitter, “but I don’t at all accept that the one to fight it is
America, which does not act in the name of Islam but rather in its own
interests, even if blood is shed.”

While both are Sunni Muslim movements, each seeking to establish a
global Islamic Caliphate, ISIS views the Brotherhood as too passive,
while the Brotherhood sees ISIS as being unnecessarily violent in
pursuing its aims.

The nexus between the larger Muslim Brotherhood, its Syrian branch,
and groups connected to it in the U.S. seems to come together at the
notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, VA. Last year, as IPT
points out, a man who spoke there last year – Hassan Al Hashimi –
mourned a man with very close connections to al-Qaeda.

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I am an American Patriot...part of the grassroots movement of bloggers spreading the truth the media will not. I am also co-host with Craig Andresen of RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on RSP Radio at: https://streamingv2.shoutcast.com/right-side-patriots